A pox on illegal downloads

Subject: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 05:22 PM

My local DVD shop has just closed down due to lack of demand and it made me think about illegal downloading and why I won't do it.

http://theglamourcave.blogspot.com/2012/03/pox-on-illegal-downloads-me-hearties.html

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 05:31 PM

I don't download. I've got to have that DVD or CD in my hot little hands....

Local shops can't compete with the Amazons or other internet sellers.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 05:41 PM

I have only once bought DVDs new (Doc Rowe's set on British ceremonies) and I doubt if I've watched as many as ten of them all the way through. Given their manipulative behaviour over region coding, I'd be positively delighted if their entire industry goes bust.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Joe_F
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 05:46 PM

I have never downloaded any music, and I have just ordered a CD from Amazon. Nevertheless, I am your enemy. I think that this would be a better world -- better entertained, and morally better -- if it became extremely difficult to make a living in the arts & entertainment, and flat-out impossible to get rich. I have some faint hope that the Internet will bring about that result, tho probably not in my lifetime.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 05:55 PM

Well said, Joe_F. It's always good to hear the thoughts of a person who makes his living writing.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 06:05 PM

I wish we'd go back to having people use a consistent guest name. It sounds like someone is talking to himself.

SRS

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 06:15 PM

Sorry, SRS, the 05:55 PM was me.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Don Firth
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 06:37 PM

I do not download illegally, nor do I condone it.

I do not want to clutter my shelves with DVDs and CDs that I watch or listen to maybe once or twice. I have (purchased) perhaps a couple hundred CDs of various kinds of music, and less than three dozen selected DVDs, some instructional and some classic movies or performances.

For example, I have the platinum, director's cut edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, all three movies complete with special features, in a boxed set. I purchased this from Amazon, who offered it for less than the list price and had it delivered to my door by United Parcel Service.

My wife and I rarely go out to movies. It's the hassle of going to a theater, parking the car, paying a wad of money to get in, have some kid kicking the back of your seat through the whole film, and concluded that the movie was a bit of a stinker. We subscribe to NetFlix. And we can also get DVDs of some movies from the public library. We can then sit on the sofa together and watch a movie on my laptop (17 inch wide screen) sitting on the coffee table, or watch it on our new 26 inch flat-panel TV.

And if the movie IS a stinker, we just stick it in the provided envelop and send it back to NetFlix or return it to the library. We don't have to clutter our shelves with something we'll never watch again.

I'm sorry if this works a hardship on local shops, but I see nothing unethical about our watching and listening habits. What the shops—or movie theaters—need to do is offer us something that is more convenient and/or less expensive than what I now do.

Sorry. But not really.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: bobad
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 07:14 PM

CD-format to be abandoned by major labels by the end of 2012

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Jon Corelis
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 07:29 PM

I watch maybe a hundred movies a year, all on DVD, and I've never bought one. I get them all from the local public library. Like most libraries today, it's part of a regional consortium of libraries with a shared on line catalog, so I can get almost any DVD available in region 1. They have, for instance, a blanket order with Criterion, and they are very good about buying items at purchaser request. So basically I can get just about any DVD I could buy, including classic films and the most of the better past and present TV series.

Incidentally, I watch all these on a video projector with a 7 foot screen, which I find provides a much more movie-like experience than even the best and largest state-of-the-art video screen. There is something about the projected image on a large screen in a darkened room which is, for me, essential to making something cinema rather than an imitation of cinema.

CDs are a different matter. The better CDs are a visual and auditory package, with the cover art and notes forming an essential part of it. This is, I think, especially true of folk music CDs. It's a great pity that they are being replaced by mp3s, which don't allow for the same ancillary materials (and putting them on the internet just isn't the same.)

Jon Corelis
Songs by William Blake

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: sciencegeek
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 07:48 PM

I don't download... why pay good money for an mp3???

I buy cds/dvds from performers, ebay, amazon, cd baby, yard sales & thrift stores. And I trade books, cds & dvds at online at paperbackswap, et al.

heck, I still buy vinyl (LPs)... remember them?

since I don't buy cds from the mega corps, what they do has no effect on me... as long as cd players are made, I'm golden..lol

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 07:52 PM

If the CD format IS abandoned, it will severely change things. They are concerned only with the rapidly changing pop formats, where songs live for a few weeks and are replaced. Sorta crap de jour....

I like interacting with the artist's concept of a grouping & order...just grabbing individual tracks doesn't tell you much. But then, I suppose that in a lot of pop/rock, grouping means little... it's just 'sound'.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: EBarnacle
Date: 08 Mar 12 - 08:37 PM

Buy from the local guys. Amazon' labor policies are just as bad as Apple's--but in the US.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 04:07 AM

A 100 years ago musicians got paid for performances and selling sheet music as a bonus. Then it was performances and records/ DVDs etc. and for a few the records being the major part of the income. Now it is performances again.
Should we not just accept that technology has changed and performers will get paid for live performances again.
FloraG.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: treewind
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 04:58 AM

"100 years ago musicians got paid for performances and selling sheet music as a bonus. Then it was performances and records/ DVDs etc. and for a few the records being the major part of the income. Now it is performances again.
Should we not just accept that technology has changed and performers will get paid for live performances again. "

I see two problems with that.
First, if performers were to make their living from live performances only and didn't sell CDs, the performer's fees and hence ticket cost for the audience would go up.
Second, we might not have CDs in the future, but we'll still have downloads, so the audience still won't have to go out to a concert to hear their favourite artists.

Speaking a part time performer who sells CDs, I see the demise of CD as a major format is going to be a long term problem for the minority vendors (that's me), because the the market for CD players will dry up. Somebody recently was complaining on this forum that they couldn't find a portable CD player any more, and that was a wild exaggeration then, but in two years time it won't be.

I have a couple of possible recording projects in mind at the moment, and the plan is to get 500 CDs pressed for each one. There'll be a market for then (I hope!) in the next couple of years, but the lack of future support for the CD format makes me want to think seriously about offering music for download instead or as an alternative. I'm really not sure about the economics of this - production costs might be a little lower, but what are the sales figures really like?
I suppose I'm going to have to find out soon...

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 07:03 AM

Well, once the Big Solar Flare hits us, that's the end of electronic media anyway, and whatever music survives will be back to copyright-free vernacular oral tradition in the feral context of small ultra-violent communities desperately trying to survive in the post-technological era. Half-remembered snatches of pop hits and advert jingles will be embelished into epic ballads of hero tale & adventure by true bards whose wordcraft & cunning will be the only thing between them and the sword.

Of course, most of us won't make it, but there'll be a few that will - the young, the strong, the fit, the especially ambitious - and music will resume its true place at the heart of the community rather than just an indulgent aside of a consumerist culture so far removed from any sense of reality that it's impossible to say what's real anymore. Out of this very natural apocalypse and second Very Dark Age Indeed, there will emerge a New Age on Earth, one in which humanity has learned the mistakes of the past least they're doomed to repeat them. This will be an age of love, beauty, harmony with nature - and that means, come the year 3012 it will be ANALOGUE all the way and DIGITAL will be seen as the overly convenient crap-bettaging-crap that it always was.

Well, that's my cheery thought for the day, chaps! Ultimately optimistic though, what?

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST,guest, billyockam
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 07:50 AM

Seems to me that prices (and money) get inflated because artificial forces set prices instead of the marketplace. If seller's want buyers, they need to offer them something that is really worth the money they are asking for it.

Like "Bill D" mentioned, he likes "interacting with the artist's concept of a grouping & order". The seller could provide more than "just sound" and add value to the product. Certainly, as Suibhne Astray pointed out - digital is crap. Well, we should find a way to actually sell a better product, then it would be worth it for purchase.

I like to go to certain local record stores because of customer service and interaction with "an expert" that knows me and suggests things that I might like. I also need the chance to listen to it before I buy it. If I get crappy treatment from salespeople, then I'll go to Amazon.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: sciencegeek
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 09:10 AM

As long as PCs & laptops use CD or DVD drives, the media will continue to be produced.

When I record with my Edirol R09, I set it to WAV & use a large enough SD card to hold what I need. Once that gets saved to a hard drive, I can make an mp3 or burn a CD. Or I can copy to a flash drive. yes a bit labor intensive up front, but I'm not doing anything commercial that demands economy of scale.

The demise of the record player was short lived, like Lasarus, it has been raised from the dead. Vinyl or DAT still seem to have the best quality and retention of sound veracity... to serve as the master copies and digital has the easiest duplication capabilities... and people can be inventive little devils ( just look at hackers) when it comes to finding ways to do things.

On an earlier thread I mentioned some songs that the hubby did... using mudcat & email I was able to share not only the lyrics, but an mp3 of one of the songs. Maybe the future of music by the people for the people ( as opposed to mega corps) will be an off shoot of you tube & social media??? I do know that I would have killed - back in the '50's - '70's- for something like the web that we have today. the things only found in science fiction...

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 09:52 AM

If you read the comments following the article bobad linked to, you will find that the article has been officially debunked.

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: GUEST,Hookey Wole
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 11:35 AM

"A pox on illegal downloads"

Blimey that's a new and drastic global media cartel anti internet piracy scare tactic

'Illegal downloading will give you VD !!!!'

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: YorkshireYankee
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 05:45 PM

Right you are k.l. -- thanks for pointing that out.

AaMoF, here's a link to an article mentioned in one of those comments: Reports Of The Death Of The CD Are Greatly Exaggerated

Subject: RE: A pox on illegal downloads
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Mar 12 - 07:01 PM

The story, of course, is nonsense.
It may have some validity for popular stuff, but not for my taste. Much of my collection on cd (older music, 13th c. through baroque) is not available as downloads (poor quality!), sparsely handled by libraries and rental companies available to me or not in their hands as all, and wanted for repeat listening. Moreover, as mentioned in a preceding post, the notes and librettos provided with the discs are essential.
I purchase from multiple sources, often receiving best service and selection from UK online sellers.